How much space would 8GB of 3.5" floppies require?

I bought a $7 flash drive recently that holds 8GB.  It's tiny.  Curious, I did some calculations.  If my arithmetic is correct, that 8GB is equivalent to almost 6000 3.5 inch floppy drives, which would fill a cube 5ft on a side.  So by dollar per GB it's about 1000 times cheaper.   3.5 inch disk sales peaked in 2002 at 14 million.  So only ten years later, and we have 8GB flash drives. 

These gentlemen are holding a string to approximate a 5 ft cube.

Hyping classroom technology helps tech firms, not students

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120205,0,639053.column

National Day of Unplugging 2011

Here's a great idea:
National Day of Unplugging 2011

The Revolution will not be tweeted

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink! has a fine essay on why
The Revolution will not be tweeted.

Leave Facebook Now

Here's an excellent post about why you should leave Facebook.

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-to-delete-your-facebook-account-2010-5

Living in a Cave

It's not uncommon to hear people who are frustrated with my skepticism about technology to say "Do you want to live in a cave?" They seem to think that living in a cave is a really bad thing. So far, no one who has expressed this sentiment has actually had an experience of living in a cave.
I have lived in a cave. Also in a yurt and other places that by modern standards would seem quite primitive. True, it's not especially comfortable, but to quote Royal Robbins, "what you gain in comfort you lose in intensity." When a cave is your home, your life is lived very intensely. There is a richness and vividness about it that living in a comfortable home with all the technology imaginable can never provide.

Space Shuttle Date Problem

The Space Shuttle can't launch in December because the computers can't handle the year-end date rollover. One of the most advanced technologies in the world is handicapped by a bad computer design.
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